Translating a Storyboard into Code

I had a fun experience the other day. I am working on a game project with a designer and an electrical engineer. On Friday, I had lunch with the designer and we worked on a series of storyboards for the game. At the end of the lunch he left and I thought, “Great. With this storyboard, the EE will know exactly what to do.” Then I thought about that for a minute and concluded, “I don’t think the EE will appreciate this storyboard so much.”

So I translated the storyboard into faux code pictured here. I showed it to the EE and he said, “O yeh. This makes sense.”

from Andrew Berady who researches different types of expertise at ASU:

The funny thing is that I understood the faux code better than the story board, but the two together painted a better picture for me than either alone.

You might be Intermediate Interactional Expert (IIE) or Interactional Expert (IE) or both. The main difference is that if you’re IE, you can go to another designer or electrical engineer and say you’re one, and not have them doubt you. Interactional expertise means that you’ve been so immersed in the language of practice that you can speak it fluently, even if you don’t have formal training and can’t do any of the actual work. Intermediate interactional expertise is similar. You get to a proficiency level for communication that allows you to understand and bridge gaps, but it’s not sufficient to fool someone into thinking you’re a full expert like IE is. Now, if you could actually sit down and design or write the game yourself, then you’d be a contributory expert – what the average person thinks of when they hear expert.

I wish I had a term for this situation where someone with IE or IIE in two or more disciplines can bridge the gap between them, but I’m not sure it exists yet. Maybe translational expertise?